He finally reached the square and looked around.
The sky was greyish, crossed by exhausted, dirty clouds; the tall buildings, which emerged through the mist looked unfinished and ugly.
The river, which split into two streams just ahead of the open square, was thick and yellow, like diluted paint.
Women and men walked briskly around him, fixed their eyes on the stranger, so alien to the place, but they didn't do anything more than registering his presence.
They were all dressed in shades of black and white, they looked neat and clean, but all their clothes looked cheap, or poorly executed, like their hairstyles.
You could recognize the passages of scissors and razors in the men's hair, and the women's were evidence of attempts to create something cute or sexy, attempts that had failed halfway through and finally completed only by necessity.
He breathed deeply and started wondering why he was here.
He had been in the extreme north, where rigid temperatures whipped your face, at the tropics, where the streets smelled of the sweet smell of decomposed leaves, but he had never seen a place so unlikeable.
He wondered if for a few days in spring or summer the sun rays could break through the grey sky and shed some benign light on this unfortunate town.
Suddenly he saw her and it was like an awakening, he remembered why he was there. She was standing, maybe 10 meters from him, maybe less, looking at him amused.
